Diane Cooper stared out of the broad bay window of her childless home at the rain-washed road as if it held some secret that would never be given up. The street lamps had started to deliver an umber burnishing to the paving stones, but their filaments were not in full flow; when they were, the road would be smeared in an orange oil that Diane knew well. From the top-floor tenement building, the broad sweep of the long, straight street stretched out like a horizon she surveyed with weary eyes. Every inch of the view – a mile long to east and west – was familiar to her. The huddled, amorphous masses of people that passed by were not known by name, but each one was identifiable on sight. The old woman with the water-bag legs, trailing her tartan shopping trolley, was running late – she’d be lucky to catch the butcher’s shop before closing. The broad man with the blazer – it was a blazer today, a change from pinstripes – sheltered under a raised newspaper outside the estate agents; had he left his briefcase behind? The Evening Times seller beneath the clock was never bothered by the rain, just let it plaster his hair to his head and collected his dues, crying, ‘Times . . . Times . . .’
It was starting to get cold, a change in the weather. There would be no more good drying days, her mother had said just that morning. Seasons changed overnight in Scotland: you woke up and suddenly the sun of summer was gone, replaced by winds and wet and the promise of frosts of winter to follow. Diane didn’t like the nights drawing in, the cold, the wet. She didn’t like to see the people rushing in the streets to get indoors, bumping into each other with elbows aloft beneath umbrellas. She didn’t like to see the cars with their lights on when the day wasn’t even halfway through. She didn’t like to see the children coming home from school waiting at the crossing for the green man to appear. The younger ones would shiver in the cold; she feared for them. It was cold and flu season. Some didn’t have proper coats. Children needed proper coats in this weather: it was Scotland, and four seasons in one day wasn’t unheard of in summer, never mind winter. People needed to look after their children, needed to take care of them. Children were a gift: Diane knew this, sometimes, she thought, like no one else.
‘She’s a wee angel, so she is . . .’ Her mother had said.
She could still hear the words, see the faces around the hospital bed. Billy had wanted a boy, but when he saw her his heart melted.
‘She’s perfect,’ he said.
He had tears in his eyes when he held her. He didn’t want to hold her, hardly ever wanted to pick her up because he was frightened that he’d drop her.
‘Take her, daftie,’ Diane told him. ‘You’ll not break her.’
He took her in those big builder’s arms of his and held her in a way she’d never seen anyone else hold a baby: out in front of him, like it was an angry cat or laundry being delivered. It had made her laugh; she still laughed now.
‘Oh, Billy, hold her to you,’ she’d said. ‘She needs to get the scent of you, get used to you, you’re her dad.’
‘I just don’t want to drop her or, you know, hurt her.’
‘You’ll not drop her or hurt her.’
He held her tighter and smiled and stared at her. ‘She’s just so . . . perfect.’
And she was: Janie had been perfect. There wasn’t a day went by that Diane didn’t remember her daughter and thank God for the time she’d had with her. It was a short time, far too short, but the memories of that time burned like an eternal flame in her mind. She could still see her the day they brought her home from hospital – just a baby then – and then there were her first words, her first steps, her first day at school . . .
Diane felt pressure building in her chest and retrieved her gaze from the street. It was as if she had been staring into complete darkness, and the return to the dimly lit room required some adjustment. She reached out and took hold of the back of the sofa to steady herself. How long had she been standing there, staring out? She didn’t know. The sense of time seemed to have deserted her; she was unsteady, woozy. It was as if the laws of gravity had altered when she was in her daydream. She pressed both palms onto the sofa’s soft moquette and stilled her breathing. She’d been told about this before; she worried that the panic attacks might come back. Today she worried about them more than she had before.
‘Jesus, Billy . . . Where are you?’
The room spun now, little blotches of iridescent light appeared on the rain-splattered window, the street seemed like a poorly lit circus, all loud noises and rushing, whirring bodies and vehicles she couldn’t quite focus on. Diane folded over, balanced her brow on the back of her arm and then tried to straighten herself. She made for the kitchen and retrieved a tall glass from the draining board to fill with water. The city water wasn’t the best, carried the taste of old pipes with it, but she gulped down a mouthful, and then another. When she was finished, she placed the glass on the drainer and turned her back on the window that overlooked the communal yard of the flats. Janie had played there, in the yard, as a little girl. Diane could still remember calling out to her on a spring morning to come inside and put on a cardigan. She was just playing, though, just playing with her little friends. Diane sighed, a deep, care-worn exhalation; she still saw Anna and Michelle, and the other little girl, Tammy, still lived across the close. She was eighteen a little while ago, the stair was trailed in bunting and banners, big keys . . . the key to the door, the keys to the outside world, the adult world. Life. Diane’s heart stilled at the thought. Janie would have been eighteen this year, a grown-up, a woman.
‘Twelve years . . .’ She dropped onto her haunches and cried. ‘Twelve years since . . . Janie . . . Janie.’
The kitchen linoleum was cold beneath her feet, but she didn’t care. She toppled over and lay on her side where she fell; her bare arms touched the cold floor, but she didn’t care. Janie was cold. Somewhere. Wherever her daughter had met her end, she was cold, dead. The tears became harder, stronger, more rhythmic. The tears shook her whole body and gathered in a shallow pool beneath her head. There had been so many tears, so, so many. There had been years of crying and recriminations. Years of hurt and hoping for better days to come, but they never did. Nothing repaired the damage done to a family by the death of a child, of a much-loved daughter who could never be replaced. How did they go on from that? How did she? The tears intensified once again, but the rictus of her contorted, agonised mouth refused to allow the deep wails of hurt that she held inside. It was something she couldn’t share, not after twelve years, not even with her husband.
‘Billy . . .’
Where was he?
She wanted her husband. She wanted him home, to hold her. To say he understood. To tell her that wherever Janie was, she was safe. She was with angels. She couldn’t hurt any more. She couldn’t feel pain, the pain they felt, because she was in heaven. It was all words, all Billy’s timeworn words that he repeated to reassure her that she didn’t need to see the doctor again, didn’t need to have her prescription antidepressants increased from three a day to four. She could leave the flat, she could leave the building, she could, maybe, one day, if she felt like it, go into the real world, back to work even.
‘No.’
Diane shook herself. She eased her elbows out from beneath her and pushed herself from the grimy, cold floor. It was dark now, completely in blackness, save the glow of a dim and distant moon that shone with weak luminescence over the back yard and was reflected through the window.
She wondered how long she’d lain there, like a rag wrung out. Her arms were cold, the white flesh horripilating. She rubbed the forearms and shook her head again. The kitchen table seemed like a great distance away, but she knew she had to get off the floor. She didn’t want Billy to see her this way; he would have his own worries. He tried to brush things aside, tried to make light, to look on the bright side, but she knew he was full of hurts. He played the big man, but he was as broken as she was; he just didn’t show it. He didn’t dare reveal it, because he still needed to be strong so that she could be weak.
The sound of a key in the lock startled Diane.
‘Hello, love.’
He was home.
She wiped her face with the back of her hands; her knuckles were raw, rough. How had her skin become so coarse, she wondered? She hadn’t been looking after herself.
Billy’s heavy boots trailed the corridor, then a light went on. The brightness burned her retinas, and she raised her arm to shield her eyes.
‘Love . . . What are you doing on the floor?’ His voice was calm; it was always calm.
‘I–I . . .’
‘It’s OK, no need to speak.’ He knelt down beside her, placed an arm around her shoulder and slowly began to raise her from the floor. ‘Come on, love, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. How would that be?’
Billy set about filling the kettle in the darkness. He seemed used to it, like it was the room’s normal state.
‘You can put the light on . . .’ said Diane.
‘Are you sure? Your eyes look red raw.’
‘It’s OK . . . I don’t want you burning yourself making me a cuppa.’
Billy grinned, and his broad face gleamed. She wondered why he hadn’t asked her what was wrong. Did it mean he didn’t want to know? Or did it mean that there was so often something wrong that he didn’t feel the need to ask?
‘Billy . . .’
‘Yes, love.’ The kettle started to whistle, he had the teabag and the spoon in his hands.
‘I want you to come and sit down.’
He turned to face her, and for the first time since he’d arrived she noticed a look of concern on his face. He put down the teabag and the spoon, then crossed the floor towards her. ‘What is it?’
‘Will you sit down, please.’
His broad brow became furrowed, and the thin lines beneath his eyes, darkened by the dirt of the building site, deepened. ‘Diane . . .’
She raised a hand to his lips and bid him quiet.
‘I had a call today, when you were at work . . .’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘It was the police.’
Billy’s mouth widened. ‘The police?’
She could feel her lower lip start to tremble as the words passed. ‘There’s a police officer, he’s investigating a murder.’
Her husband seemed to sense how difficult it was for her, he reached over and grabbed her hands in his. ‘Hey, look, whatever’s happened, it’s OK.’
Diane looked towards the window, which reflected the interior of the room. She looked back to Billy. ‘He’s called Valentine and he wants to come and see us . . . about Janie.’
Billy gripped his wife’s hands tighter. ‘Why? Why now? After all this time?’
‘I don’t know, he just . . . asked.’
‘Do they have someone?’
‘No . . . I mean, I don’t think so.’
‘Then why?’ He rose from the chair, he seemed agitated. Diane knew he liked to lock things away, keep them inside. If he didn’t look there, they didn’t exist, not really: at least that’s what he could pretend.
Diane turned in her chair. ‘I said he could come . . . I said we would speak to him.’
Billy walked towards the kettle; its whistle was piercing the air as he picked up a spoon and clattered it into a cup.